It’s a question you’ll ask yourself one day. You want to know how to be happy. Happiness is different things to different people. A truth in this life is that there is always someone to compare yourself to if you allow those thoughts to enter your mind. Her hair is prettier. His career is more lucrative. Her children are better behaved. His bigger house is in a better neighborhood.

The worse comparison we can make is against ourselves.

How to Be Happy

Perhaps your life has made a turn that wasn’t in your plans. You seemed to have everything going for you and then everything went against you. Life as you knew it fell apart. Our imperfect world sometimes works like that. Sometimes our circumstances change negatively because of others and sometimes it’s because of our own human, imperfect, and selfish choices.

We think to ourselves about how wonderful our life was before it fell apart. We think inwardly and begin a downward spiral that consumes us with envy or anger or depression. Sometimes we feel all of it. We covet our old life back.

Other times we question God’s divine design. We have done everything good we were taught to do. We have an internal notepad that we keep in our hearts with tally marks of our good deeds and mortal accomplishments. According to us, we should be well on our way to the paths of happiness, but instead you’re living in a 30 year old trailer that’s falling apart and you’re a single parent raising kids that depend on you.

You wonder to silently yourself how to be happy.

Then one day, and it’s on the day you least expect it, you wake up out of the fog you’ve been coveting in and you realize that you’ve been going about things the wrong way. Maybe it was a quote you read on the internet. Maybe a friend sent you a text. Perhaps it was this post you are reading right this moment.

What you have discovered is that with mortal life comes mortal tribulations. Trials. Problems. It’s part of the package of human life. You can’t escape it. However, you can face trials head on and prepare yourself to meet those challenges with patience and persevering through faith in a Power larger than yourself.

Then, in due time, standing firm with Hope and patience through our afflictions, we gain an understanding of that which had eluded us before and caused us so much suffering. We become a little more grateful and a little more faithful. This is not to say that we will know all the answers to why we suffer, as we may never know during this lifetime. But as we practice faith, we build persistent hope in things to come.

This is how to be happy:

Don’t let comparison steal your joy.

“Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is.” -Mandy Hale

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” (2 Cor. 4:8–10, 14, 16–17.)

This devotional is inspired by Smile Jar. Smile Jar is a way to bring hope and encouragement to women of all ages.